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Denny Hamlin: ‘It’s hard to not be negative’ after massive NASCAR penalty

JHby:Jonathan Howard•08/23/24•

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Denny Hamlin
Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK

On Thursday, NASCAR handed Denny Hamlin a 75-point penalty as well as a deduction of 10 playoff points. That’s a huge blow. It feels like it is another major hit to his championship hopes and dreams.

Every year there is something. This year, that something was an engine violation committed by Toyota Racing Development. Denny Hamlin’s engine from the Bristol win this season was sealed and used a second time this season at Darlington.

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NASCAR was not allowed to tear down and inspect that engine after Darlington. It was sent back to TRD and taken apart and rebuilt. Toyota self-reported the violation and now Hamlin has dropped from third to sixth in points.

Today at Daytona, Hamlin spoke to the media about the penalty.

“This definitely tops it for sure because it was something that didn’t happen in a certain moment, right?” Hamlin said, via Dustin Long of NBC Sports. “It was, ‘Hey we gotta go back to tell you what happened a while ago.’ But, I mean, should I be surprised? I don’t think so. But I mean, it’s uh, I don’t know, it’s hard to not feel and be negative in the moment and I am in the moment. I feel negative about it. Not about the decision or anything like that, just about our season and potentially what it could or couldn’t do.”

Denny Hamlin has been one of the best drivers all season long. However, he hasn’t had a win in quite some time. Just when it felt like his team had momentum heading into the playoffs, they lost more than a race worth of points.

Denny Hamlin addresses huge penalty

Denny Hamlin was in the running for the regular season championship. Now, he is going to try and pick up playoff points to make up for his penalty. He dropped from third to sixth in both regular season and playoff points with the penalty.

Before qualifying, Hamlin was asked about the penalty on the NBC broadcast.

“No, we go each week to try to win,” Hamlin explained. “We’ll do that these next two weeks and then the 10 weeks after that. It just takes away a lot of the effort and hard work we put in to get the bonus points, obviously takes away our room for error in the playoffs.”

Toyota Racing Development messed up this season. After Denny Hamlin won at Bristol, that engine, which only had one race of mileage on it, was sent back to Joe Gibbs Racing. That is fine and dandy. Engines are supposed to be used two to three times.